Instructor-led group exercise classes have been popular for decades. For example, in the 1970's and 1980's aerobic classes, in which instructors led aerobic exercises set to music, gained widespread popularity. Over time, variations of group exercise classes abounded. Today, a wide variety of exercise classes making use of various types of equipment and set to various types of music—e.g. Zumba™ (dance) and Spinning™ (group stationary bicycle classes), Pump™ (Body countering with weights), Aerobics™ (step exercises)—are available and offered for personal and group use by DVD, Internet including YouTube and exercise facilities ranging from home gyms, to public or membership based gyms, to local YMCAs.
Although the type of music, physical movements and equipment used varies from class to class, most group exercise classes have in common the characteristics that they are instructor-led. Many are set to music. Some classes further incorporate music videos or other imagery to assist in motivation (e.g. videos of terrain in stationary biking classes). Thus, for example, in a Spinning class, typically, an instructor will play a playlist which either the instructor or a master distributor has compiled, e.g. a collection of popular songs with particular beat counts to set a particular pace for an exercise, over the classroom's sound system. The instructor may also choose to play a video showing popular cycling trails (e.g. the hills of Italy or routes through Napa Valley) to provide entertainment and motivation to class participants. It is also common in these classes for the instructor to call out commands (e.g. increase resistance to 70%, “position 1”, “position 2”, “freeze”) from time to time. Instructors typically encourage class participants to sing along with the music as added motivation and as a group bonding exercise.
Typically, the primary emphasis of such exercise classes with music is unquestionably exercise. While the music is important, it is secondary to the exercise with little or no effort made to facilitate it.
A drawback of group exercise classes is that typically the music and/or videos are broadcast to the entire class and everyone experiences the same music and same video and not all class participants may be familiar with the melody or lyrics to the songs. This may make it difficult for class participants to sing along. Notably, karaoke systems, which allow users to sing along with songs by scrolling the lyrics to songs in synchrony with the music across a screen, are widely known and popular. Heretofore, singers have typically enjoyed the karaoke experience in karaoke bars or at home; however, it would be quite enjoyable for singers to be able to enjoy karaoke during group exercise classes as well.